An Industrial Blockchain-Based Multi-Criteria Decision Framework for Global Freight Management in Agricultural Supply Chains

Abstract

In view of increasing supply chain disruption events, for example the China–United States trade war, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Russia–Ukraine war, the complexity and dynamicity of global freight management keeps increasing. To build a resilient and sustainable supply chain, industrial practitioners are eager to systematically revamp the freight management decision process related to the selection of carriers, shipping lanes, and third-party logistics service providers. Therefore, this study aims at strengthening decision-making capabilities for global freight management, in which an industrial blockchain-based global freight decision framework (IB-GFDF) is proposed to incorporate consortium blockchain technology with the Bayesian best-worst method. Through the blockchain technology, pairwise comparisons can be conducted over the international freight network in a decentralized and immutable manner, and thus, a secure and commonly agreed-on pairwise comparison dataset is acquired. Subsequently, the pairwise comparison dataset with multi-stakeholder opinions is analyzed using the Bayesian best-worst method in order to prioritize the selection decision criteria related to carriers, shipping lanes, and 3PL service providers for global freight management. To verify the methodological feasibility, a case study of an Australian agricultural supply chain firm was conducted to support the development end-to-end (E2E) supply chain solutions originated from Australia. It was found that port infrastructure, ports of call and communication effectiveness were the major criteria for the selection decision, which can be emphasized in future global freight collaboration. In addition, an immutable and append-only record of pairwise comparisons can be established to support the visibility of time-varying stakeholders’ preferences.

Streamlined Resilient Post-COVID-19 Supply Chain in Industry 4.0: A Case Study on Romania

“…According to the authors, one strategy is to adopt blockchain technology, not by itself (as alone, according to the research performed on 603 companies from Egypt, it is sure to have a negative impact on the chain) but rather in conjunction with customer integration or green customer information strategies [48]. Adopting this technology will also help strengthen the decision-making capabilities of global freight management through an industrial blockchain-based global freight decision framework that will incorporate consortium blockchain technology and the Bayesian best-worst method [49].…”